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Contemplative Living

Christine’s Reflection on Honoring the Body

Christine has a new reflection published at Bearings journal online on Honoring the Body: “My story is not a one-way hero’s journey. I have not overcome or done battle; I don’t want to be anybody’s inspiration. Stories that give the impression that one can achieve victory over the body’s vulnerabilities do a great disservice to the collective imagination by pushing away the discomfort of grief. I want my story to reveal that tenderness and surrender instead of fortitude and domination are signs of strength. I want my story to say that yielding to my body’s needs rather than forcing myself

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January 26, 2022
Monk in the World Guest Post Series

Monk in the World Guest Post: Noelle Boughton

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Noelle Boughton’s reflection, “My COVID Transformation.” In early 2021, we’d been hearing for a year that COVID was a global time of transformation. That was certainly my sense going into it the previous March, and I was so excited to see how it would transform my life and that around me. In fact, my spirit was dancing with the possibility of what could be!  Then I smacked into reality. I was working in a congregation that had never

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January 26, 2022

Introduction to Birthing the Holy: Exploring the Sacred Feminine and Archetypes

Seminary of the Wild recently welcomed Abbey of the Arts online abbess, artist, contemplative, and prolific author, Christine Valters Paintner as a guest Wild Luminary speaker. Christine shares from her new book exploring the archetypes of Mary and the sacred feminine. “The sacred feminine is not at the expense of the masculine. We need both in healthy balance to one another. The feminine values qualities of intuition, dreaming, receiving, and resting among others. We all hold the feminine and masculine within ourselves. Mary offers us many faces of this sacred feminine presence and can help us to cultivate a slower,

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January 25, 2022

Celtic Wisdom for Troubled Times ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Love Note:  Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, We are thrilled to be offering a virtual Celtic pilgrimage starting January 31st which is the feast of St. Brigid. Journey with us over nine days as we deepen into Celtic wisdom and hear the stories of Brigid, Ciaran, and Gobnait. Each day’s live session (via Zoom) also includes film footage from Brigit’s Garden and two of the Aran Islands as well as our wonderful guides Dara Molloy, Jenny Beale, Deirdre Ni Chinneide, and Pius Murray. (All sessions will be recorded if you can’t join us live). Simon de Voil will be joining me to hold

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January 23, 2022

Monk in the World Guest Post: Wil Hernandez

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Wil Hernandez’s reflection “Stability and Presence.” About two years ago, as the Covid-19 pandemic was beginning to spread, I found myself stranded in an unlikely place: a Benedictine Abbey in the southern part of the Philippines. As it turned out it was to become my home for the next two and a half months. Originally, as part of the monastery’s Lenten Recollection during the Holy Week, I was to give a three-part series on the topic of

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January 19, 2022
Abbess love notes

Cultivating a Wild Heart of Connection ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I first met Lindsay Sudeikis at a Spiritual Directors International conference in Seattle in 2019. She was co-leading a workshop on ancestral lineage healing. It was a beautiful program and at the end I went up to introduce myself and thank her for the experience.  We discovered we had much in common. She was immersed in Catholic mystical practices and traditions (and had been a nun in a contemplative order for a period of her life). Her ancestors were from Lithuania (Baltic like my Latvian ones) and from Ireland where she travels regularly to spend

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January 16, 2022
Monk in the World Guest Post Series

Monk in World Guest Post: Kirsten Keppel

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kirsten Keppel’s reflection on living the Liturgy of the Hours. I find that living the Liturgy of the Hours through short yet consistent practices of paring and pruning, offering hospitality, and praying briefly can transform a day from an endurance ride to a chance to live and create in God’s garden. One day can hold such power to touch a life.  I learned to do this through a friend’s parting gift to me in spring 2015.  It

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January 12, 2022
Abbess love notes

Give Me a Word – Drawing Winners: A Love Note From Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, Thanks to everyone who shared their word with our community! The practice of listening for a word to guide you into the next season of your life is an ancient one.  This is an excerpt from my book Desert Fathers and Mothers: A brother questioned Abba Hierax saying, “Give me a word.  How can I be saved?” The old man said to him, “Sit in your cell, and if you are hungry, eat, if you are thirsty, drink; only do not speak evil of anyone, and you will be saved. (Hierax 1) A key phrase, repeated often in the Sayings of

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January 9, 2022
Abbess love notes

Health Update from Christine

Dear monks, artists, and pilgrims, I continue to feel deeply grateful for your loving prayers and circle of care. I truly feel held and lifted during this time of illness with COVID-19. Thankfully I am starting to turn a corner on symptoms. My congestion and coughing are quite a bit better now although I am still very fatigued and sleeping a lot during the day. If you enrolled in one of our upcoming programs you will have seen that we are cancelling some things and postponing others, all to give myself the most spaciousness for recovery possible. It has been

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January 7, 2022

Monk in the World Guest Post: Pat Butler

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Pat Butler’s reflection “Microbursts.” Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say, rejoice.—Philippians 4:4  Until I sat with my sister on a couch for five minutes, I thought of celebration as a rowdy birthday party, an extravagant wedding, or a solemn liturgy. Weddings, holidays, a newborn, or a new job—all are causes for celebration, but occasional. As a monk in the world, I needed to rejoice more frequently—always, Scripture says. How could I inject celebration into my daily

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January 5, 2022